A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(59)
“B-but he’d settled on me. Frank you know he’d settled on m-me. On my design. My plan. And, l-l -listen. I’ve g-g-got to have that commi-comcommi-com miss ion.” He spat the last word out. His entire face had grown shiny with the effort. His voice had become louder, and several mourners on the path to the grave site looked their way curiously. Frank stepped out of the procession and drew Nobby with him. The coffin was being carried past the side of the conservatory and in the direction of the sculpture garden northwest of the house. A grave site there would be more than suitable, Frank realised as he saw this, Guy surrounded in death by the artists he’d patronised during his life. His hand on Nobby’s arm, Frank led him round the front of the conservatory and out of the view of those who were heading to the burial.
“It’s too soon to talk about all this,” he told his former student. “If there’s been no allocation in his will, then—”
“There’s been no architect n-named in the will,” Nobby said. “You can depend on that.” He mopped a handkerchief against his face, and this movement seemed to help him bring his speech back under control.
“Given enough time to think about things, Guy would have changed to the Guernsey plans, believe me, Frank. You know his loyalty was to the island. The idea that he’d choose a non-Guernsey architect is ridiculous. He would have seen that eventually. So now it’s just a matter of our sitting down and drawing up a coherent reason why the choice of the architect has to be changed, and that can’t be difficult, can it? Ten minutes with the plans and I can point out every problem he’s got in his design. It’s more than just the windows, Frank. This American didn’t even understand the nature of the collection.”
“But Guy already made the choice,” Frank said. “It dishonours his memory to alter it, Nobby. No, don’t speak. Listen for a moment. I know you’re disappointed. I know Guy’s choice is one you don’t like. But it was Guy’s choice to make, and it’s up to us to live with it now.”
“Guy is dead.” Nobby punched every syllable into his palm as he said it. “So regardless of whatever he decided about the look of the place, we can now build the museum the way we see fit. And the way that’s most practical and suitable. This is your project, Frank. It’s always been your project. You have the exhibits. Guy just wanted to give you a place to house them.”
He was very persuasive for all his oddity of appearance and speech. In any other circumstance Frank might have found himself being swayed to Nobby’s way of thinking. But in the present circumstance, he had to remain firm. There would be hell to pay if he didn’t. He said, “I just can’t help you, Nobby. I’m sorry.”
“But you could talk to Ruth. She’d listen to you.”
“That might be the case, but I actually wouldn’t know what to say.”
“I’d prepare you in advance. I’d give you the words.”
“If you have them, you must say them yourself.”
“But she won’t listen to me. Not the way she’d listen to you.”
Frank held out his hands, empty, and said, “I’m sorry. Nobby, I’m sorry. What more can I say?”
Nobby looked deflated, his last hope gone. “You can say you’re sorry enough to do something to change things. But I suppose that’s far too much for you, Frank.”
It was actually far too little, Frank thought. It was because things had changed that they were standing where they were standing right now. St. James saw the two men duck out of the procession heading towards the grave site. He recognised the intensity of their conversation, and he made a mental note to learn their identities. For the moment, however, he followed the rest of the mourners to the grave. Deborah walked beside him. Her reticence all morning told him that she was still smarting from their breakfast conversation, one of those senseless confrontations in which only one person clearly understands the topic under discussion. He hadn’t been that person, unfortunately. He’d been talking about the wisdom of Deborah’s ordering only mushrooms and grilled tomatoes for her morning meal while she’d appeared to be reviewing the course of their entire history together. At least, that was what he finally assumed after listening to his wife accuse him of “manhandling me in every way, Simon, as if I’m completely incapable of taking a single action on my own. Well, I’m tired of that. I’m an adult, and I wish you’d start treating me like one.”
He’d blinked from her to the menu, wondering how they’d managed to get from a discussion of protein to an accusation of heartless domination. He’d foolishly said, “What are you talking about, Deborah?” And the fact that he hadn’t followed her logic had set them on the path to disaster. It was disaster only in his eyes, though. In hers it was clearly a moment in which suspected but unnamable truths were finally being revealed about their marriage. He’d hoped she might share one or two of them with him during their drive to the funeral and the burial afterwards. But she hadn’t done so, so he was relying upon the passage of a few hours to settle things down between them.
“That must be the son,” Deborah murmured to him now. They were at the back of the mourners on a slight slope of land that rose to a wall. Inside this wall a garden grew, separated from the rest of the estate. Paths meandered haphazardly, through carefully trimmed shrubs and flowerbeds, beneath trees that were bare now but thoughtfully placed to shade concrete benches and shallow ponds. Among all this, modern sculptures stood: a granite figure curled foetally; a cupreous elf—seasoned by verdigris— posing beneath the fronds of a palm; three maidens in bronze trailing seaweed behind them; a marble sea nymph rising out of a pond. Into this setting at the top of five steps, a terrace spread out. Along the far end of it, a pergola ran, trailing vines and sheltering a single bench. It was here on the terrace that the grave had been dug, perhaps so that future generations could simultaneously contemplate the garden and consider the final resting-place of the man who had created it.